Liz, Author at Successful Blog Page

Reluctant Readers: Content Is King, But . . . I’m Too Tired to Read

January 9, 2007 by Liz

What This Is Not: This is NOT a design critique. It doesn’t take into account, the elegance, usability, great content, SEO, or revenue values of the fabulous blog discussed here: Read/WriteWeb, which is one of my favorite reads.

What This Is: It’s an exercise in point of view, how readers look at things. It also only addresses one value — how folks read. I choose a great blog to illustrate that even the greatest blog can challenge the patience of a tired, reluctant reader.

We’re All Reluctant Readers

In literacy education, there’s a euphemism, RELUCTANT READERS. That term is meant to name adults and children who come to print after having failed at learning to read. They come with specific needs. It’s hard to catch and keep their attention. Most educators use the term to identify folks who read below the level of the average population.

I use the term more literally. I think, at times we’re all reluctant readers — no matter how strong our skills are. Any time we have to read when we’re out of steam, we become reluctant readers — even if it’s our favorite topic. Then there are the times when we just aren’t interested. we’re definitely reluctant readers at those times too.

If you question that you’re ever been a reluctant reader, try this — pick up a legal document you don’t care about, and dig in for entertainment. . . . Bet you’ll wish for some pictures and some subheads.

Serving and Being a Reluctant Reader

Last night I was a reluctant reader. I decided to go with it. I looked at pages as an a naive, intelligent customer. My quest was to see when the page made it hard for me to read the content. What I found was that the question of supporting reluctant readers is only one value.

Beautiful blogs have many values.

Here’s a page from Read/WriteWeb, a blog I read regularly. This particular page features a post on Web Previews. The screen shots that follow tell the story.

Read/WriteWeb: the page full width.

Read/WriteWeb: same page main text only.

To get the fullest effect, visit the Read/WriteWeb page itself.

Feeds are a moot point in this discussion. Readers can’t see the ads, but they also can’t respond to them. Some questions to consider about folks who see the whole page:

Where does your eye want to spend it’s time?
Would you call this choosing for the reader?
Could design tweaks increase readership, without sacrificing revenues?
Is content king on this page? How would you order the elements by importance as you take the page in visually?

Read/WriteWeb is an excellent blog. with great content, great design, and a loyal readerhip. They’re in a business that is sponsored by advertising. That’s what lead me to realize that accessing the content has to be a partnership between the blog and the reader. Each has a part to make the experience work effectively.

What do you see that supports a reluctant reader? What might you do to draw that reader into the content?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Shirley George Frazier Is a B.A.D. Blogger!

January 8, 2007 by Liz

Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Shirley there?

Shirley George Frazier’s first comment on Successful-Blog was November 10, 2005. Making this call was going to be exciting. It’s not every day I get to have a conversation with a Week 4 SOB!

Shirley and I started right in talking about her books. She’s written several, but I was asking about one — the one she was writing and documenting on her blog when I met her. She told me the story of how her publisher had a slightly different vision for the release of it. She related one of the biggest differences — the book was finished months ago, but wouldn’t be published until next fall. We talked about her disappointment that 1.8 billion individuals who work as solo entrepreneurs would have to wait for the help she had gathered, how some of the information might be outdated. . . . Then there was the boring title issue, but we didn’t dwell on that one.

Shirley’s reaction? “Things that are negative make you want to go after the things you can control.” She’ll be self-publishing her next book for sure. That’s what Shirley said.

Thinking like that and being an entrepreneur, Shirley told me, is in her DNA for generations. She provided the proof by telling me family stories. My favorite was the tale of her grandmother, who ran a strawberry business in 1905 Virginia. That story lead to the stories of each of her parents in New York City. I told a story or two of my own.

Shirley’s own entreperneurial path led her into the specialty gift basket business. She was all energy when she talked about how it began and how the business grew into something remarkable. Shirley had some quite famous clients, who still call her up when they need something special even though she doesn’t do that for anyone but them anymore. When she wrote a book about how to do what she did and began to speak on the subject, Shirley had to hire people to run the business. Now her primary work is speaking, writing, and blogging on small business topics both online and traditional. She sounds jazzed about every minute of it.

What fun it was to get to know someone I’ve known for so long. She’s exactly as cool and as much fun as I expected, only 100 times even better.

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

A person who is under the radar can share an opinion, and still stay under the radar if they want . . . but they can still have a voice. —Shirley George Frazier

Stop by Shirley’s Blog, Solo Business Marketing, and say hi!

Thanks, Shirley, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.

Congratulations on the Tag Page at Technorati! Is it Our Turn Now?

January 8, 2007 by Liz

The Exciting New Tag Pages Go Live Today!

When you go to Technorati this morning — oh you’re one who’s stopped going? — well go on over. They have exciting news! David Sifry has announced the new and updated Tag Pages in honor of the second anniversary of Technorati tags. At the Technorati weblog, where he makes the announcement, David explains the beauty of both the tag pages and the value of tags.

And, with the launch of our new Tag Pages, we’ve improved the way that you can check out the Live Web, too. A Technorati Tag Page shows you everything in the known universe (blogs, videos, photos, podcasts, music, people) tagged with your topic or interests, all in one place. [ . . . ]

The beauty of tags is that theyÃ¢â¬â¢re metadata: data about data. What does that mean? Tags actually describe their subject, as opposed to, say, keywords, which just occur within them.

Is It Our Turn Now?

I’m delighted with your new Tag Pages, Dave. Seems every time I turn around there’s another new feature or an improved whistle to one. I bet it feels grand to be growing and winning technology awards. I just wonder how many customers asked for this one, because the Technorati users that I know have more basic things at the top of their wishlist.

Every morning and throughout the day, I play a game I call Technorati Roulette. I get links on posts, and I check in. There’s no predictability to whether my link count will go up, go down, or even change. I might have the fun of seeing my archive chronology suddenly rearrange time in some alien fashion.

Every time Technorati does a reset, upgrade, or anything new, I lose 20 or more links, just like that! I’ve learned to expect it every weekend. It’s a fact of Technorati life.

You might say that’s because Technorati only tracks 6 months of links. That argument doesn’t work. That might work if my archives went back 6 months but they only go back 60 days!! And there was no weekend in the history of this blog that I took on as many links as I’ve been losing in one fell swoop. So that math doesn’t work.

Things at Technorati I have been broken since five months before I wrote Dear Niall Kennedy and David Sifry at Technorati. That would be about 16 months now.

Here are my problems today:
Janice does her best to address what’s going on. The engineers look. The issues remain. There are plenty of emails with screenshots about the problems. Sorry to do this out loud, but behind the scenes hasn’t worked. Maybe this way some folks reading will feel they are not alone.

This is my link archive page — Question: What happened to the links between 20 hours and 4 days ago? Answer: They’re scattered among my other links throughout my link archive chronology. (Click to enlarge.)
I still have rogue links that repeat and repeat through my archives. I’ve discussed this one and sent screenshots too often to detail it here. Page through my link archive chronology, and you will see four or five of the same links crop up over and over.
Random Example: Page 61 of my link archives lists my links from 29 days ago — except for the two entries that are from 24 days ago. Many/most archive pages have one or two entries out of chronology like that.
Somewhere around link archive page 115, EVERY ARCHIVE PAGE REPEATS. I HAVE NO LINKS OLDER THAN 60 DAYS. I HAVE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR MONTHS.

That’s just me though. What about the folks I know who haven’t been indexed for over 100 days? What about the folks who can’t get indexed at all? What about the folks who can’t claim their blogs? How important is an improved Tag Page to them?

David, I’m sorry to rain on your parade. But c’mon. Where are you looking? It’s our content that you’re indexing. We’re stakeholders in what you do.

Sooner or later, someone like Blog Pulse is going to provide a service that works and folks will go there. We’ll go there because it’s more reliable than Technorati roulette and because it’s more fun than writing this kind of post to a guy that I really like.

When is it our turn? When is our wishlist important enough?

— ME “Liz” Strauss

~~UPDATE: WHEN I PUBLISHED THIS POST I DROPPED 10 MORE LINKS. I CAN’T QUIT LAUGHING ABOUT THE TIMING OF THAT.~~

UPDATE: THANKS DAVID, JANICE, AND THE ENGINEERING TEAM FOR RESTORING MY LINK COUNT. I APPRECIATE IT. :p

Promotion: Free Press Release Sites — Using the List

January 8, 2007 by Liz

Free, Press Releases — What Does that Mean?

Free — 10 : not costing or charging anything — Merriam-Webster Online
Press Release — press release, release (an announcement distributed to members of the press in order to supplement or replace an oral presentation) — Wordnet at Princeton University

Great Find: Blogging Secret Free Press Release Sites!!

Permalink: http://bloggingsecret.blogspot.com/2006/11/free-press-release-sites.html

Target Audience: Anyone who has news to announce to an online audience

Using the List

I’ve not been to every site on the list. Nor would I take for granted that every service is free. I know that, PRWeb, possibly the most well-known press release service online, has fee-based offerings. Each of these sites provides guidance for beginners and direction for reaching the market most effectively. Read through the press releases they currently have on display to see which are most compatible with what you want to share news about. That will be the pr site that’s the best fit for you.

I’ll use PRWeb as a model for what you might look for in support. They provide templates, tips and guidelines for the press release writer. The tips and guidelines show writers where focus attention in preparing content to prepare a strong press release. Points in this section include:

Is your news “newsworthy?”
Start strong.
Write for the Media.
Not everything is news.
Does your press release illustrate?
Stick to the facts.
Pick an angle.
Use active, not passive, voice
Economics of words.
Beware of jargon.
Avoid the hype.
Get Permission.

You might notice that what they’re suggesting is quality writing and content.

To visit the entire list of Blogging Secret Free Press Release Sites!! click on the title below.

No one needs all of the places on this list. You might read through a few, if you need a broad and specialized education in using press releases. Next, check their services to find the best fit for the support you need. Then, look through the press releases at each site for those that match well with your product launch. Finally, you might also do a search on Google and Google Blog Seach to find which of these sites are being talked about on the PR blogs.

Do you know the sites this list? Which have you used and which do you recommend?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Promote Your Business at Working at Home on the Internet

January 7, 2007 by Liz

What a Great Service!

Joe Hauckes, at Working at Home on the Internet is offering a great service. He’s opened a Featured Home Businesses Section on his blog.

Great Find: /featured home businesses/

Permalink: http://workingathomeinternet.com/WP/featured-home-businesses/

Target Audience: Folks who will use your services and products

Content: Joe is showcasing home business in what he calls a Free Promotion for a Day Post. It’s free promotion and relationship building that lasts much longer than a day. You’ll find that rules for inclusion are well-stated and easy to follow. Take advantage of Joe’s offer by clicking the title below.

Promote Your Home Business on Working at Home on the Internet

Thanks, Joe, for supporting home businesses in this way.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Metrics: Who Are We and How Are We Feeling?

January 7, 2007 by Liz

Information as Art: A New Look at Stats

In August of 2005, the We Feel Fine project began harvesting data from weblogs. In this metrics of feelings, the system scans the Internet every few minutes for new blog posts sentences that include the phrases, I feel and I am feeling. Whenever possible it also gathers from the blog additional identifying data: the age, gender, and geographical location of the blogger who wrote the sentence.

The database now contains several million human feelings and grows by 15,000+ daily.

Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar have organized the data into “six movements” — each artful, entrancing, and compelling in it’s presentation of humanity. They describe We Feel Fine in this way.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles’ properties Ã¢â¬â color, size, shape, opacity Ã¢â¬â indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. . . .

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what’s on our blogs, what’s in our hearts, what’s in our minds.

Click the image below to go explore how we’re feeling.

The people who wrote these sentences are our readers. They are also us.

What do you think of how we’re feeling today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss